Today is the festival of Christ the King. During this past year our liturgical cycle has moved from the whole world waiting for its Savior, through the coming of an infant in poverty and obscurity, his dying, rising, and returning to the Father, the church's own pilgrimage in the image of Christ, to his final coming trailing on clouds of glory. Today we reach the liturgical end of the story. Today our liturgy celebrates the high point of creation, when humankind and all that is, even death itself, will be subjected to Christ. This is so clearly expressed by the apostle Paul when he wrote, "When he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power" (1 Corinthians 15:24). Walter J. Burghardt states: "At the close of the church year, the celebration of Christ the King is like the coda in a Beethoven symphony. It not only brings the movement to a decisive end, but it forms a climax to what has gone before it. It is at once a summing up and at the same time splendidly new."[1]
The text in 2 Samuel 23:1-7 is a poem, and this poem and the one by Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 serve as lyrical-theological affirmations that bracket the entire story of David and kingship. This poem articulates God's resolve to have an "anointed king," as well as God's purpose to use the anointed one to bring well-being and to raise up a king congenial to God's purpose. Therefore, these three motifs -- God's sovereign power (vv. 1-2); God's moral expectation (v. 3), and God's abiding fidelity (v. 5) provide the clues to the shape and significance of David's rule. Brueggemann points out that "this high royal theology is taken up and used by the early church for christological affirmation. The New Testament found this language readily appropriate for Jesus -- who is raised to power, who ruled justly, and who bears God's abiding commitment."[2] As we look through the lens of our text it brings into focus more clearly the significance of our celebration of Christ the King Sunday.
A grandmother wanted her granddaughter to attend Sunday school. So she arranged to pick her up and take her. She took her to her class and introduced her to her teacher. Following the class the grandmother picked her up and drove her home. The grandmother was anxious to hear about her granddaughter's experience. She noticed that her granddaughter was in a rather pensive mood as she silently stared out of the car window. Finally, the grandmother could not stand the suspense any longer and asked her granddaughter, "Well, what did you think of Sunday school?" Thoughtfully, she replied, "Grandma, what's so great about Jesus?"
People ask that same question today. They wonder why Christians are making such a fuss about Jesus. Why all of the commotion? Why all of the excitement, celebration, and festivity? Why all of the contatas, concerts, and pageants?
How would you answer that question? If your child or grandchild would ask you that question, how would you respond? I have thought a great deal about this question. I realize that we would probably have as many answers as we have people in church today. Each of us has come to Christ by a different road or pathway. There is a vast variety of religious experiences. Since your answer would relate to your own personal experience of Jesus in your life, you can see how our answers would be so varied.
Today we are completing our liturgical journey that has encompassed the entire life of Jesus. In our journey we have reflected on the birth of Jesus, and our journey through Epiphany and Lent has given us a better idea of the kind of world that he lived in. We have discovered that the land of Palestine at the time of Jesus' birth was controlled by the Roman Empire. Two thirds of that empire were slaves. They were sold as property, and punished and killed at the discretion of their owners. Magicians and soothsayers abounded in the land. Barbarous struggles between men and beasts were the most popular form of entertainment. In a month's time 20,000 lives were sacrificed in the Roman arena. The worship of the gods was based on fear and superstition. The vices of the gods became the virtues of men and women, and they lived in terror of the gods. The masses were haunted rather than helped by their religion.
What is so great about Jesus is that he brought a revolutionary understanding of God into a world that did not have the slightest concept of a God as loving and considerate. Jesus revealed a good and loving God, who is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and all of this creation is good. Jesus' central theme is "God so loved the world" -- a love that is for everyone and everything. God is concerned for all the people of the earth. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as the God of Sarah, Leah, and Rachel. Not only did Jesus provide us a new concept of a loving God, but also he showed us a God who loves and cares for all.
In this liturgical year we have discovered many encounters that Jesus had, but none is more interesting than his encounter with Philip. It takes place in John 14 where Philip says to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father ... I am in the Father and the Father in me." What kind of heavenly Father do we see in Jesus? We see one who is willing to socialize and eat with sinners. Jesus enjoys the company of people, regardless of who they were, so much so that he was called by his critics a winebibbler and a glutton. He associates with social outcasts like Zacchaeus, who was a quisling, who sold out to the Roman government so as to get an important tax job. He comes to the lonely and the forgotten as seen in his visit to the man at the pool of Bethesda who for 38 years lay at the edge of the pool unable to get in the water because he had no one to help him. He reaches out to the prostitutes and the lepers. He gives sight to the blind and makes the lame to walk. He ministers to a family that is humiliated and socially disgraced because the wine ran out at their daughter's wedding. Jesus was sensitive to their embarrassment and he helped them. In our liturgical journey through the church year this is the kind of heavenly Father that Jesus has come to reveal to us. That's what is so great about Jesus!
The story of the New Testament forever is reminding us that God has come among us in the person of Jesus to share our lives. Regarding that fact there is no doubt. Jesus' coming was so different from the world of the Greek and Roman gods that it was hard for the masses to understand God in these terms. As Bishop Robinson reminded us in his penetrating book Honest to God, God is not out there, or up there, but God is here with us. The life of Jesus is the fact of God's friendship. Jesus was made of woman under the law. God through Christ came in the midst of life, as expressed by the apostle Paul in the text, "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself." In the words of E. Stanley Jones, "Jesus has domesticated God." He moves into our total life from the living room to the boardroom, to the sickroom, to the bedroom, to the courtroom. God is with us from the nursery to the nursing home, from the obstetrician to the funeral director. This is absolutely remarkable; never has the world known God in such terms. That's what's so great about Jesus: God is with us every step of the way.
When we come to celebrate the kingship of Christ, it is not political kingship. Jesus reminded us, "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). Burghardt stated that through the birth of Jesus a trinity of tyrants, Satan, sin, and death, were defeated by the lordship of Christ. Not that they have vanished from the earth, but their despotic power has been broken. We need no longer be slaves to Satan and sin. Jesus did not defeat them by the force of arms, nor by power or pomp, but by dying and rising. How appropriate are the apostle's words:
We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. -- Romans 14:7-9
Jesus is "the king of hearts." He draws us to himself not by might nor by power, but this King draws us to himself by the cords of love. The road that leads us to God's kingdom of love and grace does not pass through corporate boardrooms or political caucuses. It passes through the cross.
1. Walter J. Burghardt, Still Proclaiming Your Wonders, p. 74.
2. Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation, "First and Second Samuel," p. 347.